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| Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | | 2:54 am |
further thoughts about slumdog millionaire and cidade de deus that could only interest me
I've talked before about how I think slumdog millionaire and cidade de deus have a lot in common. I think it's pretty unmistakable as far as the cinematography goes. But since I'm writing a piece about City of God for homework tomorrow, I came across a major difference between the two, that I think has a lot to do with my preference of one over the other. In slumdog millionaire, the repeated phrase is "It is fate." That is the explanation given for how a kid born in the slums of mumbai could win a million dollars as well as finding the love of his life in the process. Each question fortuitously links to particular fragments of his memory that enable him to miraculously progress. Yet the ending seems to imply that this is a comedy with an inevitable end. It's possible that I misunderstand what the director wants to imply by fate, but to me the invocation of predetermination weakens the movie's heft. In city of god, all is chance, happenstance. The first scene in the movie appears to be a disastrous encounter, wherein the protagonist accidentally bumps into the local gang that he believes is out for his head. However, he then later finds out through a quirk of fate that this scene will actually turn into his way out of city of god once and for all. As far as I recall, he's the only one to ever actually leave. But the reason seems not to be his character or refusal to deal in crime, but rather - randomness, an unexpected opportunity allowed by his past choices, but also not an inevitable result. It might just be the stage I'm in at my life, but such a version of the rags-to-riches story that they both present has both more credibility and more importance. Now to say it in Chinese. | | Saturday, November 21st, 2009 | | 1:54 am |
definition battle
CHAV: an uncultured youth eg Vicky Pollard in Little Britain CHOG: the core of a piece of fruit, a stubby penis surpassing DOH for new favorite collins definition. | | Friday, November 20th, 2009 | | 11:25 pm |
ADVENTURES IN WORD STUDY
I have now actually memorized all the collins 3s. for real. I suppose if I were going to worlds I would be on a better schedule than this, but you know, I'm satisfied. something interesting: I think my memory is significantly better than it used to be. I suppose that's what happens when you spend every evening trying to memorize fifty new words in chinese. taking an early stab at guessing who would have a shot at winning, I'm taking a look at the list...andrew fisher has been absolutely dominant in australia as of late. kenji aside, everything I see about helen gipson is really impressive. anyone know anything about charnrit? really, though, if I had to pick it would probably be the obvious (nigel, ganesh, panupol/pakorn/charnwit). wouldn't it be great if Jason won though? I think my pick is Ganesh. maybe I'll reconsider later. wow, how about the 14 year-old kid for malaysia? I sure hope William Kang turns in a good performance. also hard not to root for the polish dude with the headset on. or, for that matter, brian bowman. it's hard not to root for a good crimefighter. who's missing from the field this year? | | Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | | 10:26 pm |
how did this never occur to me before?
I've been trying to deal with the logistics of my trip since I don't have much schoolwork today. The current hurdle is figuring out how to get from saigon to hong kong on the 28th of december. I figured it would be easier than it is, except that it turns out all the direct flights are around 500 dollars US (for a one-way trip!), far beyond a realistic price. so I used something that I've never once used before, in spite of the fact that I happen to know a Scrabbler who works for them - the ITA app, which impressed me a lot and included a lot more flights in south-east asia from tiger airways and the like. Unfortunately, the price is still nowhere close to good, and I have the feeling I'll have to dig around on Air Asia and the like myself before it works out. But it's still nice to find an upgrade to doing everything manually. does ITA keep track of fares for you? edit: actually, air asia gives way better prices than anything else. I guess I just need to check it myself after all. sigh. | | Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | | 10:02 am |
there's just no way
Snow. In the last two weeks here in Beijing, it has snowed FOUR TIMES. We're not talking about light sprinkles, either. Each time it has snowed for at least four hours in a row. There has been snow (and more recently slush) on the ground everywhere. And I own no winter clothes, and cannot find anything that fits me at the markets I've been to here in beijing. acck. take me to california. | | Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | | 12:12 am |
the basic plan
dec 6, fly to Johor, possibly via KL, possibly not depending on finances dec 8-10, play scrabble dec 10-25, meet up with dad, travel across south-east asia, through at the very least malaysia and thailand, maybe angkor wat dec 25-27, play ultimate tournament in saigon dec 28, meet up with zu in hk dec 28-jan 12 first to shenzhen, then to guilin for the remainder of the time, maybe throw in time in guangdong somewhere in the middle jan 12-19 go north to harbin, check out the ice festival, maybe just maybe go skiing for the sake of it. sounds pretty good, right? edit: john and cecilia...not to crash your party, but does your traveling look anything like mine at all? | | Monday, November 2nd, 2009 | | 3:12 am |
the amazing places where procrastination can take one
how to make scrabble popular: have famous people start playing tournaments. I'm mostly just kidding due to exhaustion. but somehow, through an incredibly convoluted series of internet links, I ended up running across a picture of this guy and thinking - wait, doesn't he look familiar? ( cut for sanity )why, yes he does. This guy's name is derek ramsey, he's a bigtime actor in the philippines, and I have played him in ultimate. huh？ ultimate (the game with the frisbee) is turning into a huge deal in the philippines, which I already knew about previously. their teams are athletic, skilled and passionate as hell. they just torched us when I played with hong kong last summer. however, what I somehow hadn't realized is that part of the success is that a bunch of the guys who play are movie stars/celebrities who just happen to be unbelievable athletes in their spare time. and over the last hour or so i've found a ton of videos of ultimate in the philippines which seem to serve mostly as an excuse to show these guys being beastly. now, what if we could somehow get one reasonably well-known celebrity to come and start dramatically throwing bingos around? this is not a legitimate suggestion, I'm just mired in an unbelievable bout of procrastination and had to do something about it. | | Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | | 11:56 pm |
delayed collins action, 25 and 26
this may end up being called the jesserant after all. maybe next time. this time I am tired and just remembered this needs to get done. I give you two KATE words, because she's cool: You can stick an A on the back and front for AKATEA, evidently some kind of new zealand plant. I can't really think of any other names that could possibly be true of. the second is...well, hard choice here. a few particularly fun ones. KISTVAEN is gorgeous, but I'm pretty sure I already saw it on geoff's blog a while back. or maybe that was CISTVAEN. However, I'm going to choose LEKGOTLA, the plural of KGOTLA, defined as "an assembly of tribal chiefs in botswana." There's a guy from botswana here at ACC. I should try to see if he knows it. anyway, this word wins because of irregular plural (a la MATAMBALA) and improbable consonant cluster. maybe next time i'll address the plethora of BH- words in collins. | | Monday, October 19th, 2009 | | 11:22 pm |
| | Sunday, October 18th, 2009 | | 7:40 pm |
collins of the day #24
I want to write something about J words because I'm listening to Jay Chou right now (I talk every so often about how good he is, but you should try listening to him for yourself)，but all of the JAY－ words are in ours except for JAYWALKINGS#. That doesn't quite seem good enough, so I'll give you this cool word: JESSAMY is an alternate spelling for JASMIN, evidently. but that also makes it one of the three JESS- words that are collins only. The other ones are JESSIE (defined as an effeminate man...now now) and JESSERANT, a type of armor that dates back to the Song of Roland, according to the remarkably nerdy yet pretty cool-looking NetSword forums. I'm not sure how I feel about medieval armor enthusiasts having a better organized forum than competitive scrabble does, though. Current Music: 给我一首歌的时间-周杰伦 | | 11:45 am |
collins of the day #23
oops, I somehow forgot to post one for yesterday. However, you're all in the states, so I'm still in the clear by about 15 minutes. not that the consequences of failure are too important or anything, but, you know. Today's word is probably more fun for people who play collins on a regular basis because it's one that you almost certainly won't know: the double-woadwage play CLANJAMFRAY. It took some looking, but it turns out that the ABSP website has a list of all the scots words, allowing me to give you a definition: rubbish, nonsense, which is sort of a self-describing word because it looks like a word some bored scotsman came up with a few centuries ago to confound future lexicographers. at least a couple of the internet citations I found actually seemed to use the word in context, though, which is better than most. Interestingly, the ABSP website lists two alternate spellings: CLANJAMFRY* and CLANJAMPHRY*. I suppose if the word's obscure enough even collins won't include (wow, I just thought of that word in chinese first instead of english) the wacky non-standard orthographies. | | Saturday, October 17th, 2009 | | 2:26 am |
fuck it
I just don't know how to make myself care about ACC anymore. Not chinese, but the ACC way of doing it. what to do? | | Friday, October 16th, 2009 | | 1:38 pm |
collins of the day #22
This one's a tough choice, but I'm going to go with LOD. What? a 3 letter word? Well, two reasons. First of all, it shouldn't be a word because it's a statistics abbreviation that's not nearly common enough to deserve a spot in the dictionary. However, the real reason is because of the definition: "the logarithm of the odds, used in statistics and in calculating Scrabble ratings (emphasis mine, duh)." This may be the first definition I've ever seen that makes direct reference to competitive Scrabble. I half-wonder if Mike Thelen put that in there as a cheeky joke, waiting for the first person to notice it. | | Thursday, October 15th, 2009 | | 9:48 pm |
collins of the day #21
this one's been lying in wait for a while. Start with DAINE, which means, well, to deign. Collins is big on alternate old english spellings of now-standardized words. Here's the fun part - it's a verb, so it takes a back D and S. But it ALSO takes an S in front. for SDAINE. Which means to disdain! The only language I've ever seen that has initial SD- words is Italian, but I guess I now get to add English to the list. further zyzzyva work reveals that every word that starts in SD- is collins-only. There are altogether five spellings of SDAINE: SDAINE, SDAYN, SDEIGN, SDEIGNE and SDEIN. Toss in a couple of other great words - SDEIGNFULL and SDEIGNFULLY, sort of reminiscent of BRIMFULL and BRIMFULLY in ours (although BRIMFUL is good too). There happens to be one last SD- word - SDRUCCIOLA, which is an Italian word related to word stress. I love Collins' way of making me think about things that would never have occurred to me otherwise. in this case, Italian linguistic terms. Speaking of which, what are all those Indian words related to compound word formation? I know they're on john chew's website but I'm too lazy to track them down at the moment. | | Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 | | 7:21 am |
collins of the day #20
this one's too easy. I found out yesterday that HAIDUK is a word. The wikipedia page (which is for HAJDUK*) reveals exactly what I was hoping: This word is actually the exact same thing that O-Zone are singing in Dragostea Din Tei. You may not know the lyrics, but remember when they have the line that sort of sounds like "sunt eu un...haiduk??" I'm trying to recreate the pause in the middle of the line that will help at least one other person figure out what on earth I'm talking about. The definition is interesting and sort of makes this reasonable to be a word. In short it's a brigand, but wikipedia makes it clear that it's sort of an Eastern Europe Robin Hood-esque trope of romanticized bandits. As usual, whether this was actually true or not in real life is a matter of contention. For further bonus points, HEYDUCK is also an acceptable spelling, plenty entertaining in its own right. | | Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | | 9:55 am |
collins of the day #19
A bunch of crazy words came up last night while I was procrastinating. I almost want to throw them all in at once, but that would be cheating. With ADEIOW?, quackle played WAIwODE on me last night, also spelled WAIVODE, defined as the leader of an army. Now here's where things get ridiculous - ADEIOW? has three steals, excluding plurals. The first is in ours and is a real life word that you might be able to come up with. the other two are crazy collins words: WITWANTONED and MOWDIEWART. Who knew collins had so many absurd long words? Don't look below if you don't want the answer. Quackle also extended ANGELIC to EVANGELIC. There's a nice one to keep in mind. I mentioned this in a comment, but the single best definition in collins is easily the one for DUH. look it up for yourself. The steal in question is WINDOWPANE. | | Monday, October 12th, 2009 | | 11:20 pm |
collins of the day #18
CHINESE#. who knew. You can add a blank and get some other words, including two collins ones - CHENIXES, plural of CHENIX, defined as "an ancient Greek measurement" and the arguably more useful INHERCES, which means, well, to put someone in a HEARSE. as usual, it has a couple of other spellings - INHEARSE and ENHEARSE. currently in a spat of unhappiness that was interrupted before going to xian but has now made a reappearance. not entirely sure what to do about it. | | Sunday, October 11th, 2009 | | 9:28 pm |
collins of the day #17
collins loves portmanteaus (portmanteaux?). This sometimes results in genius, as in the previously explored MOVIEOKE, but AVOISION doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. It actually looks more like some french medieval religious term poorly transferred across the channel, but it's actually defined as "a compromise between tax avoidance and tax evasion." There are two problems that come to mind - the first is, is this really a necessary term? of course, that would rule out lots of pretty OSPD words too, so let's leave that one aside. The bigger problem is, what constitutes AVOISION? Is it skipping the virgin islands and running your business out of delaware instead? paying a quarter of your taxes every year and seeing what the IRS does? also, have any of you ever seen this presumably recently invented neologism used, ever? it's like the SNIGLET of collins. | | 1:52 pm |
obamawhat?
reasons not to win a nobel peace prize: failure to condemn iran elections, failure to achieve progress in israel-palestinian conflict, no action in north korea reasons to win a nobel peace prize: because he's barack obama why not just give him the award for life? | | Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 | | 12:13 pm |
collins of the day #10-16
well, I'm putting a week of collins material up at once because I missed a couple and I'm heading to xi'an, probably with no internet access in the meanwhile. The recommended way to look at these is one day at a time, like an advent calendar. Or you can do what I would do in your place and look at them all at once. ( 十 )( 十一 )( 十二 ) |
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